This proposal requests support for a Keystone Symposia meeting entitled, Molecular Cardiology: Disease Mechanisms and Experimental Therapeutics organized by Joseph M. Metzger, Leslie A. Leinwand and Jeffrey D. Molkentin, which will be held in Keystone, Colorado from February 22 - 27, 2011. The overarching rationale and significance of this proposal is that human health and wellness are advanced, both nationally and globally, by new mechanistic insights emanating from the field of molecular cardiology and its application to experimental cardiovascular therapeutics. The meeting is designed to attract leading laboratories, investigators, students and trainees in the field to address gaps in fundamental pathways in human heart functionality and how, when they become dysfunctional, they contribute to cardiac disease. The significance and impact of this meeting is further amplified by aligning in joint format with a parallel Keystone Symposia meeting on Mechanisms of Cardiac Growth, Death and Regeneration. Collectively, these meetings will address the fundamental mechanisms that regulate cardiac structure, function, and repair and how they relate to human heart disease. Another unique feature of this joint meeting stems from implementing and highlighting an Early Independent Career Research Competition and a dedicated Graduate Student and Postdoc Research Competition. Specific Objectives feature: 1) insights and controversies in the genetics, epigenetics and the biochemistry and physiology of cardiac cell growth;2) emerging concepts in cardiac calcium handling and how new mechanistic insights are informing novel experimental therapeutics;and 3) mechanisms of inter- and intra- cellular cardiac communication in health and disease. The concurrent meeting format also aims to accomplish the following: 4) stimulate interactions among stem cell biologists and individuals studying cardiac growth, death and cardiac physiology;and 5) provide trainees with a significant learning experience through several mechanisms in addition to the usual lectures and poster presentations. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Myocardial ischemia and heart failure are the most common causes of mortality in the United States and the world. This Keystone Symposia meeting on Molecular Cardiology: Disease Mechanisms and Experimental Therapeutics is designed to attract the leading laboratories, investigators, students and trainees in the field to address gaps in our understanding of fundamental pathways in human heart functionality and how, when they become dysfunctional, they contribute to cardiac disease. This meeting - held in tandem with a meeting on Mechanisms of Cardiac Growth, Death and Regeneration - will involve scientific questions relevant both to the cardiovascular system and stem cell biology as a whole.